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The Marin County Coroner’s Department in California reported that actor Robin Williams died Monday.

According to the news release, Williams, 63, was found “located unconscious and not breathing inside his residence in unincorporated Tiburon (Calif.),” at 11:55 a.m.

Williams was pronounced dead at 12:02 p.m.

An investigation is underway by the Investigations and Coroner Divisions of the sheriff’s office.

Williams was last seen alive at his residence, where he lives with his wife, at approximately 10 p.m. Sunday.

The coroner division suspects the death to be a suicide from asphyxia, but an investigation must be completed before a final determination is made.

A forensic examination is scheduled for Wednesday with a subsequent toxicology test to be conducted.

From his breakthrough in the late 1970s as the alien in the hit TV show “Mork and Mindy,” through his standup act and such films as “Good Morning, Vietnam,” the short, barrel-chested Williams ranted and shouted as if just sprung from solitary confinement.

He was a riot in drag in “Mrs. Doubtfire,” or as a cartoon genie in “Aladdin.” He won his Academy Award in a rare, but equally intense dramatic role, as therapist Sean Maguire in the 1997 film “Good Will Hunting.”

As word of his death spread, tributes from inside and outside the entertainment industry poured in.

“Robin Williams was an airman, a doctor, a genie, a nanny, a president, a professor, a bangarang Peter Pan, and everything in between. But he was one of a kind,” President Barack Obama said in a statement. “He arrived in our lives as an alien — but he ended up touching every element of the human spirit. He made us laugh. He made us cry. He gave his immeasurable talent freely and generously to those who needed it most — from our troops stationed abroad to the marginalized on our own streets.”

Like so many funnymen, he had serious ambitions, winning his Oscar for his portrayal of an empathetic therapist in “Good Will Hunting.” He also played for tears in “Awakenings,” ‘’Dead Poets Society” and “What Dreams May Come,” something that led New York Times critic Stephen Holden to once say he dreaded seeing the actor’s “Humpty Dumpty grin and crinkly moist eyes.”

Williams also won three Golden Globes, for “Good Morning, Vietnam,” “Mrs. Doubtfire” and “The Fisher King.”

His other film credits included Robert Altman’s “Popeye” (a box office bomb), Paul Mazursky’s “Moscow on the Hudson,” Steven Spielberg’s “Hook” and Woody Allen’s “Deconstructing Harry.” On stage, Williams joined fellow comedian Steve Martin in a 1988 Broadway revival of “Waiting for Godot.”

“I dread the word ‘art,’ ” Williams told the AP in 1989. “That’s what we used to do every night before we’d go on with ‘Waiting for Godot.’ We’d go, ‘No art. Art dies tonight.’ We’d try to give it a life, instead of making ‘Godot’ so serious. It’s cosmic vaudeville staged by the Marquis de Sade.”

His personal life was often short on laughter. He had acknowledged drug and alcohol problems in the 1970s and ’80s and was among the last to see John Belushi before the “Saturday Night Live” star died of a drug overdose in 1982.

Williams announced in recent years that he was again drinking but rebounded well enough to joke about it during his recent tour.

Born in Chicago in 1951, Williams would remember himself as a shy kid who got some early laughs from his mother — by mimicking his grandmother. He opened up more in high school when he joined the drama club and he was accepted into the Juilliard Academy, where he had several classes in which he and Christopher Reeve were the only students and John Houseman was the teacher.

Encouraged by Houseman to pursue comedy, Williams identified with the wildest and angriest of performers: Jonathan Winters, Lenny Bruce, Richard Pryor, George Carlin. Their acts weren’t warm and lovable. They were just being themselves.

“You look at the world and see how scary it can be sometimes and still try to deal with the fear,” he told the AP in 1989. “Comedy can deal with the fear and still not paralyze you or tell you that it’s going away. You say, OK, you got certain choices here, you can laugh at them and then once you’ve laughed at them and you have expunged the demon, now you can deal with them. That’s what I do when I do my act.”

He unveiled Mork, the alien from the planet Ork, in an appearance on “Happy Days,” and was granted his own series, which ran from 1978-82.

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he did a lot of uso tours, 3 of them in baghdad...my son had the honor of being part of one of his escort teams while stationed there, driving him around...Williams loved visiting the soldiers and they loved him...very down-to-earth, kind, and funny, he touched millions of lives...our family treasures that memory.

American Heritage Dictionary definition of fascism: "...a system of government that exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the merging of state and business leadership, together with belligerent nationalism."

with lightning wit, Williams suffered bipolar disorder. Some with the problem will self-medicate and form addictions.

Suicide by asphyxiation, though? That seems a peculiar method to choose.

"These attempts involve using depressants to make the user pass out due to the oxygen deprivation before the instinctive panic and the urge to escape due to the hypercapnic alarm response. It is impossible for someone to commit suicide by simply holding their breath, as the level of oxygen in the blood becomes too low, the brain sends an involuntary reflex, and the person breathes in as the respiratory muscles contract."

Of all the diseases with which one can be afflicted, depression may be the worst. Yet a bipolar person can live a normal life with proper medication and therapy. It sounds like Williams may have fallen into a very deep depression that is hard to imagine by those who don't have the disorder. Robin had everything to live for. But that's not enough under the horrific pressure of this chemical imbalance that tortures the afflicted.

He has moved on to a better place. Thanks, Robin, for the humor that uplifts everyone.

...who died too soon. We have recently lost such greats as Bernie Mac, Robert Schimmel, Greg Giraldo, Patrice O'Neal, and now the incomparable Robin Williams. While Bernie and Patrice died from medical complications, and Robert in a car accident, Greg and Robin did as many comedians do and hid their depression and despair behind their comedic facades. They are sorely missed by the many who enjoyed their talents.